Yeah true and thanks!

Ah **** you got me!!!

Yes I somewhat agree with you on this. I am not sure exactly how to explain this but I guess I can try explain via an example.

Lets say triple barreling is very marginally +EV vs this population. Does this mean I should always triple barrel? Not necessarily. How do I avoid triple barreling 100% of the time? Using frequencies.

So lets say I 3b 22 from SB vs BTN. Flop is good for my range, pio will generally want to triple with a hand like this. That means most of the time I will be forced to triple with 22. I can avoid this by just folding pre. The EV of folding pre will probably be similar to 3b. Therefore I can maybe assign a 75% fold pre and 25% 3b. (I havent actually run the sims for this spot vs population in a while so it might have changed)

Review of the 100k hand challenge in 60 days

Reflection:

Stoked to have finished this challenge with 8 days remaining. Although I am little disappointed with the sessions towards the very end of the challenge I am very happy to show a positive winrate overall. This will add another 100k hands to my current 200nl zone database and this will allow me to do some database study. I am more than ever motivated to study and improve on my current winrate. Here is my graph from when I started playing poker again in January 2018.



I honestly think I played my best poker in March and unfortunately my results did not reflect this. April was a good month and I ran very well. I actually think I played quite poorly during my rungood period. I made some very speculative bluffs and calls but seemed to run into the bottom parts of population’s range every time.


3 Things I learnt from doing the challenge:

- Playing in 2 hour blocks works really well for me.
- Winrate is not a good target/challenge – applies too much pressure and puts you in a bad mental state
- Need to consistently review as you play (I barely had time to do this as my “study time” was spent making videos/updating thread etc)

Now that the challenge has been completed I will now take some time off actually playing and focus on off table stuff. I will do a full report and review (already started this yesterday) on my last ~220k hands and improve on my strategy and gameplay. I also want to continue creating online cash game content for youtube. I have a few ideas for series that I will plan in the next week or so. One will be more strategy and the other more entertainment/highlight sort of thing (let me know which one you guys would prefer).

I will definitely keep the thread open as I plan on doing another challenge when I return from my mini holiday to Noosa (Queensland Australia). I do plan on playing 500nlz. I think I will do this study/review then return to the 200nlz tables and implement the strategy. Then once I am winning at a higher level I will play 500nlz on the side.

If you have any questions or recommendations for my next challenge, please let me know!

Enjoyed all of your videos and updates. Have fun on your vacation and I look forward to following your next challenge. Cheers.

Final Video Day 52 Out now!

https://youtu.be/1qahTEKrNO0

Why is the KQss call off bad? I think the raise is bad, but when u jam, isn’t calling and folding close?

Look forward to ur next challenge and vids.


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congrats on the series! Ive said on YT, but ill say it again, enjoyed alot and im still using your vids as pump up before grinding(plusEV)
Looking forward for whats next! cheers

Well done.. impressive WR and dedication.

wp, well written thread and entertaining videos!

If trippling is +ev, shouldn't we always do it over other options like folding no matter how marginal the difference is

If our opponent's strategy is known, there still often exists many situations in which a mixed strategy is still optimal. Having said that, though, I doubt skuzlad is doing significant population analysis during this challenge--and in the absence of that information we should still attempt to play a pseudo balanced strategy until we are incentivized to deviate.

Congrats on the 100k finish, although you didn't achieve what you set out WR wise, was still very impressive overall and think we all enjoyed the vid content through it all. Best of luck with whatever you plan on doing next, just hope it involves many more YT vids to come. GG & GL on the grind.

why not?

feel like it's just a matter of how much variance you want. if I'm up some small amount (say 1/2 a buy-in) and towards the end of the session I'm not gonna put myself in this spot. which is a loser mindset, but still.

should we? why don't we just play a "pure" strategy that's based on our direct observation of opponents in the pool? certainly we will make mistakes/our approach will be imperfect, but why will some kind of vaguely "balanced" strategy that is not really based on anything we observed be better?

this conversation is also confusing because both of us are using the terms "mixed" and "balanced" kind of interchangeably, and they are not the same.
If you are facing a 3b, balance implies that you 4b a bluffing hand sometimes (if you are really concerned about balance, then 4b it the exact amount that makes your opponent's 3b close to zero EV, or whatever).
Mixed strat is like 4b A2s-A5s each 25% or something.
You can just 4b A2s 100% and fold A3s-A5s and you get the same frequency and are similarly "balanced," mixed strats are not necessary.

With more information you can deviate.

In your exact example, that would be OK in anon pool and 0 info.

I am actually quite unbalanced in this spot - I flat most of my strong hands and jam with my really strong diamond draws (since its annon). So yes, vs my actual range its probably not a bad call off given they have like ~55% equity. However vs a perceived range of value (AQ+) and strong equity bluffs - its a terrible call and KQs has 28% against range.

In non-annonymous games - No. If we are unbalanced with our lines our opponents can exploit our tendencies which actually might make the play -EV.

In anonymous games - Yes (to a certain extent). There are a few reasons why I would not always do it.

1. When we calculate the EV of a certain play, we are making a lot of assumptions. As a result those marginal plays might deviate because of input. A lot of the time our input might not necessarily be 100% correct and thus I usually do not weight much significance to marginal plays.

2. Variance. A lot of the times for us to realise the equity of plays, we need large volume. A lot of the weird spots are not going to come up often enough for us to realise our EV. As a result, I'm not incentivised to take a really high variance play for a very marginal +EV spot because that spot may not arise often enough. Of course this would come down to you as a player and how you value that spot.

But yes generally speaking if the play is +EV we should probably take it but there are some factors that may discourage us from doing so.


And Thanks for all the positive comments! Definitely will produce more content

do you have any comments on time of day to play?
obv if you are shooting for 3 2hour sessions a day you will prob have to play at least 1 of those sessions at off-peak hours.
just curious if you have any comments. my guess would be the quality of the pool overall remains similar throughout the day, bc there are a lot more 2 tabling regs at the peak hours.

Yes there were two particular time periods I always tried to play for obvious reasons. I don't particularly want to give away those times sorry....

For those of you who play a lot should be able to work out when that is.

Hey guys,

Been a while since I have updated.

So I came back last Monday and have been in holiday mode since (although I have been doing some study in the lab). Starting to get back into my regular routine today.

This week I am going to revise my goals and plan some youtube content.

Hope everyone has been doing well and crushing!

Alright,

So I have decided to set myself some targets for the rest of 2018. Here is what I want to complete every week. I will continue to use this thread for accountability and progress updates.

Starting 28th May 2018:

- Play 35 hours a week (Online)
- Study one hour a day
- Play live poker once every fortnight
- Post at LEAST two YT videos a week

My Short term Challenge (which I will primarily document in YT videos):
[“Moving up to 500nl” – 50 buy ins at 200nl and then 10 buyin shot at 500nl]

For those of you who have been wondering what I have been up to since coming back.

I have been:

- Gymming
- Writing a huge 200nlz population report (study material)
- Gaming
- Video planning
- Video Edit tutorials
- Learning Russian
- Esports Business Planning
- and of course - Grinding (Graph below)



I came back from holiday quite shocked at how poorly one can play after a 2 week break. I will attribute 80% of the downswing to playing poorly. However it did not take me long to remember how to play properly again and grinded myself out of downswing. I wanted to make sure I was comfortable with my minor strategy adjustments before I started posting content again.

Hopefully I will have a new strategy video out by the end of the week so stick around for that.

I must say, Skuz...you are a fine player. You're not the best player to have ever existed, but you are currently living the dream printing significant money from the comfort of your own home. You should be proud of what you've done. I do however, take exception to this post...let me guess, weekend nights (US time?, when all of the "stupid" American fish are playing)? WOW, WHAT TOP SECRET INFO!!!!

Kid...thanks for sharing your strategy, exact bet sizing, thought processes...now I can crush you when I move up to 200NL on the same site. I'll be the one stacking you for 50BBs at a time. See you at the Zone tables soon. Until then, I'll keep watching and reading

What do you do with esports?


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lots of these guys seem to like to teach people how to play better for free which in turn makes their games tougher. Why? god only knows why but it's stupid and makes me sick seeing as i play in said games.

STOP WITH THE VIDEOS SCUZZLAD

Thanks? (not sure if sarcasm) I wouldn't say its a dream but definitely desirable. Poker can be extremely stressful so it is what it is. Yes obviously weekend nights are good, hence I said most people should be able to work it out.

Also thank god its anonymous.

Still in preliminary phase but it will be related to marketing of the Esports industry in the Australian market.

This is something many people ask me. There are a multitude of reasons as to why I do videos.

Non Poker related reasons:

1. I enjoy making videos.
2. I want to improve my video editing skills.
3. I am trying to build a business and by creating a following through poker I can generate some exposure.
4. Satisfaction when people tell me they enjoy watching my videos

Poker related reasons:

1. Its anonymous. You will not be able to directly exploit me.
2. The strategy I outline is nothing game changing if you are already playing at 200nl
3. I have been winning on every site since 2016 and genuinely believe that I will continue to be a winning player despite a tougher field because of my work ethic.

I am not trying to make a coaching site/advertise myself as a coach. My content is also not that strategically concentrated. My initial intent for the zone challenge was to format it like a "stream highlights" video. However as I received more feedback and learnt more I had to add a little bit of strategy (or at least some of my thought process) so it would become a little more interesting.

It is not like I am posting population opening ranges, 3b ranges and specific strategies to counter these. If I was doing this, then I seriously would be an idiot.

At the end of the day if you are worried that some slightly above average player is putting out youtube videos because it may decrease your win rate then you probably need to spend more time working on your game. I would be more worried about a couple of the 200nlz twitch streamers. They are much better than me and go really really deep in strat.

Finally got around to editing my Pokerstars Review video.

Up now, check it out here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHgZdXYX_5k&t=175s

Let me know if you guys like this style of video.

My highlight video should be out at the end of this week. Still trying to work out how I want that to be formatted. It will be similar to my 100k hand challenge series

I liked this, maybe longer would be better )